Voltus, Tassius, and the Penitus Oculatus
Today I wanna ask you the question: “Can you tell me who Voltus Agallon is?” In all likelihood, you can’t. That’s not a problem, but explaining who Voltus Agallon is, isn’t as straightforward as you might think. As it would be more accurate to describe Voltus as a concept, more so than a singular character. What do I mean by this? Well, why don’t you get comfortable and I’ll try to explain to the best of my ability.
The first thing you need to know is that our story today revolves around the town of Dragon Bridge, a mostly inconsequential place in the final game, at least without the Dawnguard DLC. It’s notable for two things;
- #1 is the unique bridge for which the town is named.
- #2 is the fact that it contains the only Penitus Oculatus outpost in the entire game. This faction took over the role of Emperor’s protectors from the Blades who did so in the past, as seen in Oblivion, for example. The faction actually made their debut in the holdover novel “The Infernal City” by Greg Keyes.
If you don’t get involved in the Dark Brotherhood questline, then you will only ever encounter these agents here in Dragon Bridge, otherwise they will only ever get acknowledged by the in-game book “The Rise and Fall of the Blades”, and a single loading screen.
As an average player, you don’t really have the need to visit the town, but you may first hear of it when you visit Solitude, as one of its local townspeople has made their way over to the jarl with a message. A couple of people in town might even mention this messenger, as he decidedly left quite an impression. The messenger in question, an Imperial by the name of Varnius Junius, has come to request assistance as there have been “strange lights” appearing in a cave near Dragon Bridge. But those events don’t interest me in this context, Varnius, however, still does. After getting his message to the court, he will make his way back to Dragon Bridge. It’s here where he will say something quite interesting:
“Mind you don’t cross Tassius. He’s in charge around here.”
Tassius is in charge? Okay then? But, uh, who is Tassius exactly? Well, despite the difference in spelling, the “Tassius” that Varnius refers to here is actually an Imperial by the name of “Tasius Tragus”. Unlike Varnius’ line, though, Tasius didn’t make it into the final game. And I’ll spoil this right now; no, there are sadly no more lines to be found that mention Tasius, neither used nor unused. He himself also does not have any unique dialogue, which is sad, but expected. There are some things you should know about Tasius though, for starters, all his factions are in order, and he has a unique design. The basic signs that an NPC got at least somewhere in development. Your average unused NPC is naked, factionless, and has a default face. Another thing that’s very interesting about Tasius is his class: Imperial Soldier — but specifically an Imperial Soldier that isn’t a guard. He shares this class with only a handful of other NPCs, namely Commander Caius, Captain Aldis, Legate Rikke and General Tullius.
But far and away the most interesting thing about Tasius are his relationships. He actually has four different relations set up with NPCs. You may think that’s not really that special, but keep in mind that Bethesda is very liberal with their use of relationship markers, usually cheaping out and giving an NPC none at all, or implementing them in a half-hearted manner. For example, did you know that Falkreath is the only town in the game where basically all of the NPCs were created concurrently and where the relationship markers were all applied in a cohesive manner? Of course, due to content cuts, not all of these markers line up with how the final game depicts these characters, but the idea is there. This amount of effort is not replicated in any of the other towns or cities in-game. Even places that have only a small amount of residents usually don’t have relationship markers set up in such a cohesive manner. For example, Dragon Bridge! Where the town is basically split up in three or four different groups. Tasius is of course an exception here, and he is also the removed NPC that has by far the most markers leftover.
The first marker of note is one tying him to General Tullius himself. It shows that Tasius is an employee of Tullius. The same type of bond the latter has with Legate Rikke, as a matter of fact. Another marker shows that Varnius is an employee of his. That makes sense, seeing as Varnius directly mentions Tasius as “in charge”. So there’s a clear chain of command in town. His other relations are of the romantic kind. Tasius is marked as the lover of Faida, the local innkeeper, as well as the secret lover of her protege, Julienne Lylvieve. That’s interesting, a bit of a love triangle. Although, in the final game we already get that with Olda, Horgeir and Lodvar. And that’s basically all there is to tell about Tasius, but it’s not where this tale ends. No, as Tasius was just a single piece in this larger puzzle. Now it’s time we look at Voltus Agallon properly. Or, at least, it’s time to attempt to do so, as we can’t really look at him, seeing as he doesn’t exist in NPC form. He does still have multiple internal mentions, though. He also has mentions in actual dialogue, although unlike Tasius, this dialogue doesn’t get used in the final game. It belongs to Astrid, who would’ve given you these details on Voltus in between Bound Until Death and Breaching Security. In the final game, her transition dialogue just has her referring you to Gabriella, who gives the actual quest explanation, unlike here. The following dialogue includes a very notable difference between the spoken dialogue and the written subtitle, which might accidentally reveal a big change:
“With the Emperor’s arrival in Skyrim now a certainty, the Imperial Legion will need to begin its preparations immediately. Security is being handled by a man named Voltus Agallon. His job is to travel throughout Skyrim, and ensure each city is prepared for Mede’s visit. You must find and kill Voltus Agallon. Doing so will disrupt security sufficiently that we will be able to, eventually, get to to the Emperor.”
You see, while the subtitles read “Imperial Legion”, the voiced dialogue actually says “Penitus Oculatus”. This seems to imply that originally, there was no such outpost present in Dragon Bridge, but instead a Legion outpost in its place. Astrid would also elaborate on this saying:
“Agallon is an efficient man, and will certainly already have begun his tour of Skyrim. Unfortunately, we don’t have his schedule. So, you’ve got two options. Try to find Agallon yourself, somewhere on his route between the major cities. Or… find and steal his schedule. You’ll find that in his office, in the Legion stronghold of Dragon Bridge. It’s your choice. Now go, and may Sithis speed you.”
This seemingly confirms the theory that the Penitus was later added in order to replace a more standard Imperial outpost. We’ll get back to all that in just a sec, but just in case you haven’t quite caught on yet, it seems that Agallon’s role in the final game was split up between two different Penitus Oculatus NPCs, Commander Maro and his son, Gaius Maro. If you compare Gabriella’s final briefing dialogue with Astrid’s early version, you’ll see the overlap clear as day. While Commander Maro handles security in the final game, it’s his son that’s the actual assassination target during the quest. When you first encounter him in Dragon Bridge, you will find him having a moment with his father, as well as his apparent lover, Faida. Hmmm. Now where have I heard that before?
In a twist you might have expected from miles away, the dialogue that Gaius uses when spoken to during the quest all still bears Agallon’s name, implying that it was just reused wholesale. There are also two scripts that mention Agallon, one still gets used by Gaius in the final game, while the other gets replaced by a very similar one that references Gaius’ alias, instead of Agallon’s, because otherwise the script would cease to function correctly, and we wouldn’t want that in our Bethesda game, now would we?The last mention of Agallon is in this early testing message for the quest, but besides that, our leads once again dry up. That ultimately doesn’t matter though, as we’ve seen enough to come to our own conclusions.
First off, the Penitus Oculatus originally didn’t exist as the specific guards to the emperor. Originally, this was just a task of the Imperial Legion. Why exactly was the Penitus brought in? Well, probably to
- A) tie in with the prior lore established or
- B) to add a more unique element to the Dark Brotherhood questline. Might’ve also been both.
I assume that in its first iteration, the Imperial outpost at Dragon Bridge would’ve been under the control of Tasius Tragus, an NPC that actually had ties to both General Tullius, as well as the other townspeople. Then at a later point, Tasius was removed from the game and his role as the commander of the Imperial Legion outpost at Dragon Bridge was given to another man named Voltus Agallon. Why was Voltus completely removed from the game while Tasius was kept in? Now that’s something I can’t explain. Let’s just chalk it up to Bethesda being Bethesda and call it a day. Then sometime after Agallon was put in charge, the Penitus Oculatus were brought in, and they replaced the Imperial Legion’s central presence in town. Due to this, Voltus Agallon was now turned into a high-ranking member of the Penitus.
Finally, it was decided the quest needed a bit more work and Agallon’s role was split between both Commander Maro and Gaius Maro. Why? Well, I suppose it has to do with either story or quest design, as the original version makes no mention of planting false evidence on Agallon, which implies that you were to just kill him, and this would cripple security enough for the Dark Brotherhood to get a shot at killing the Emperor. Either someone wanted a bit more intrigue than just killing the guy, or they wanted a better story justification for there to be a hole in the emperor’s security. Both reasons are fair, I suppose. And while I don’t think the Dark Brotherhood questline suffered due to these changes at all, the town of Dragon Bridge sure did. I mean, the quest even had some more dialogue cut in which Gabriella explicitly names the Stormcloaks as the culprits the false evidence implicates. While she doesn’t in the final game, the false evidence note itself still does. So I don’t know if they wanted subtler storytelling here or if this is just an oversight. Either way, there isn’t a single moment where you feel like a character got cut out of the quest which makes it feel weird. I do get this feeling with Dragon Bridge, although that might just be me. I just find it strange that there is this important outpost in town and no-one ever addresses it. Even the Legion chain of command a mere stone’s throw away in Solitude never does. I’m quite sure this connection was lost when they transitioned from Tasius and the Imperial Outpost over to the Penitus Oculatus one.
Neither Gaius nor his father ever interact with the townsfolk, in fact, they aren’t even found at the outpost until you first start the relevant quest. Gaius apparently has a relationship with Faida, sure, but she never mentions it, no one else in town does, and Gaius himself only lives for a single quest, so the relation is just a bit of fluff. Just based on how Tasius’ factions and relationships are set up, it’s clear that he was intended to actually be integrated into the world properly. It’s possible that this was changed due to the fact that if he were to be found before the Dark Brotherhood questline, he could be killed which could interfere with the plot. I say this as he could’ve potentially been essential as well, but the developers might’ve seen this as strange, with players possibly wondering why they couldn’t kill this seemingly random NPC. Of course, I’m fully aware that the game includes multiple NPCs that do have this exact problem, but once more, Bethesda is Bethesda and I don’t always get their reasoning. Still, I wouldn’t really call this a change for the worse. It adheres to the lore, and the Penitus Oculatus armor looks pretty cool. On the other hand, you know I’m a sucker for actually integrating characters into the world properly, and not making them feel like distant characters just existing next to each other. The Penitus Oculatus Outpost’s location data also reveals its original name as “Dragon Bridge Garrison”, which is nice to have that confirmed outside of the dialogue. Oh, and I guess I should also mention this weird line for the player attached to one of Varnius lines?
“Are you a mercenary? You won’t find much work here.”
Varnius can’t be spoken to directly in Dragon Bridge but I suppose that was once meant to be different? The line is quite confusing though, as I don’t see anyone mistaking Varnius for a mercenary. What I actually think happened here is that this line was meant to be said by Varnius, and one of the developers changed it to the final version, but instead of placing the earlier line in the “edit” tab of the CK as is usually the case, the accidentally placed it in the player prompt tab.
Of course, I have no actual proof of this, and you’re free to believe whatever you wish, but this seems like a Bethesda-ism you can actually explain. With that out of the way though, what do you think? Would you have liked Commander Maro and his son to have been more fleshed-out characters that got integrated into the world, or does an Imperial outpost sound more appealing to you?
